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unlcear yet but I suspect it's more for a Russian domestic audience ie 'you can't get away from us by claiming asylum abroad'
What's strange is the timing of these deaths...after they've been out of the country for decades. Perhaps there are a few twitching to make a run for it out of Russia?

sounds like he was investigating the deaths of other Russians in the UK

Speaking to the Guardian Glushkov said he was extremely sceptical that Berezovsky who was found hanged in a bathroom had died of natural causes. “I’m definite Boris was killed. I have quite different information from what is being published in the media,” he said.

He noted that a large number of Russian exiles including Berezovsky, and Berezovsky’s close friend Alexander Litvinenko, had died under mysterious circumstances. “Boris was strangled. Either he did it himself or with the help of someone. [But] I don’t believe it was suicide,” Glushkov said.

He added: “Too many deaths [of Russian exiles] have been happening.”

Glushkov continued to investigate the circumstances surrounding Berezovsky’s death for some months. In 2013 he emailed a friend: “I have a lot of new facts that are of great interest.”

Or live in Wales and be where people dump their nuclear reactors because we have a lower population and this are a lower risk if they went kablooey.

(I know intellectually a reactor is different from a bomb, and that leaks of radiation while they can cause mutagenic effects like 5 legged lambs, they're nowhere near as dangerous, I can't help but feel someone's going to one day nuke Wylfa and bomb plus nuclear reactor has a super-effect)

Nuking a nuclear power plant won't matter. The nuke went off, the power plant being underneath it won't be make any serious difference other than some contamination in the local area. Which will be irrelevant, mostly, because it's been NUKED

You're more likely to end up with perma-lambs whose tongues are so big that their mouths can't close than lambs with extra legs. Early cessation of growth and macroglossia were the two most noticeable defects in a radiation-affected flock belonging to a friend of mine (not in Wales, not recent, perma-lambs inedible due to contamination but v. cute and tame as they have to be hand reared due to maternal rejection and inability to bite grass).

There's a lot of talk, yes. But the governments also know that a war is an absolute end game scenario. There's no going back from declaring war on Russia. That's why all the talk has been about sanctions, freezing assets, and maybe expulsions. No one in the news or in the UK government from what I've seen has any interest in going to war.

This death, if it's connected to Russia, is much more in line with the other suspicious deaths that have occurred on British Soil, ones that didn't garner any sort of response from the UK. I doubt that this one will even be brought up in Commons.

ehhhh I get your point but I'm pretty sure there have been further developments wrt Russia blowing its load over Europe since Litvinienko, like that tiny thing of blowing planes out of the fucking sky.

Something that happened 4 years ago and didn't have a military response to it?

I'm not even talking about Litvinienko for this. There have been reports of multiple suspicious Russian Deaths in Britain over the past few years. And they didn't get nearly the news coverage these did.

Though wouldn't that sort of add credence to the idea that war is unlikely? There's reports that Russia straight up launched a missile at a commercial flight, and that didn't cause a military response. Something that are levels far lower than that causing a military response seems silly.

If Article 5 was invoked and financial sanctions was suggested Nato allies are obligated to follow. If Trump doesn't follow through with Article 5 it weakens NATO politically as it means if other Allies get attacked NATO will not defend them. The name of the game is "mutual" defense. Remove the mutual part and NATO just becomes a way for the US to built military bases in Countries it doesn't have territory in.

To my understanding NATO doesn't work like that. The UK doesn't just get to invoke Article 5 to obligate members to impose financial sanctions.

Firstly, any invocation of Article 5 would surely be discussed privately first; it is unlikely that the UK government would be so idiotic as to publicly invoke Article 5 without being aware of the positions of the major players within NATO. So the idea that Russia would expect the UK to invoke it and the US reject it - thereby undermining NATO - sounds rather unrealistic.

And secondly, any action taken in response to Article 5 being invoked is - to my understanding - based on what action each country deems necessary. The UK doesn't get to just choose sanctions on behalf of everyone.

Though worth bearing in mind that we did have our first coal-less power day recently. The energy mix is changing so as to make that hopefully less significant. (Perhaps foreseeing this sort of situation was part of the impetus.)

Exxon had to pull out of a $500B joint venture with Rosneft, the Ruble fell and the disaster that is the Russian economy flatlined after the 2014 sanctions.

Sanctions are designed to weaken a country, and that’s exactly what they did. They work, and they can be increased which they very likely will.

Putin and Co are kleptocrats. The Russian economy is the only thing that they actually care about, not because they care about the wellbeing of their countrymen, but because it acts as their personal piggy banks and is the source of their corrupt power.

This is literally wrong. Sanctions are the absolute best way to target Putin and his associates. Russia isn't run like other countries, it's a gangster state with a political class laundering money stolen from criminal activity through the west. Sanctions actually remove a huge chunk of their power and lowers their ability to act or maintain their system of government.

Well that's my point. Corbyn is soft as puppy shit, which is fine if you're going to be a stalwart socialist, champion of people who've actually spent time building callouses on their fingers - but in a geopolitical environment, where your opponent is an autocrat like Putin, even Mrs Maybe looks tougher on defence.

Conflating her capacity to thwart corruption (dirty or 'clean') no Labour government ever halted with my original argument that she looks tougher doesn't make Corbyn look any less soft. As for looks over acts, politics is one big exercise in vanity - a lesson Putin demonstrates an awareness of an awful lot more than our lot.

This is more likely to be the start of Cold War II rather than WWIII. Although if that's the case, I reckon the Russians will erase any acknowledgement that the last one ended and rewrite things so that as far as they're concerned this is still the same pawn-sniping stand-off as before.

It would be like an urban hot Fuzz, commuters silently thinking about the greater good (because they wouldn't acknowledge him by actually saying anything back, that would be a conversation) and trying to pull out shotguns but being too cramped to actually get them

I think he's saying it's not necessarily Russia that wants to start the war. Perhaps some hidden third party? I dunno, it's all tinfoil territory but with spies getting assassinated by nerve agents, I'm not sure anything is too ridiculous anymore.

In all honestly they should expel all the Russian diplomats and shut down their embassy in London (we did that to Iran for less), shut down RT, Sputniks etc. London operation and UK broadcasting license. Shut down the use of Bermuda and the Cayman Island's registry for Aeroflot's fleet. Prob any property owned in London that may be tied to the regime

Putin is reaching in and grabbing May's balls and squeezing hard. She needs to take firm action but it must be controlled, subtle and effective. She needs to be inventive, to think outside the box, something that she is not good at.

Yesterday I was quite impressed with May, she was as strong as I've ever seen her when giving that statement to parliament.

Today though there was all sorts of clips of her government on the television and I was reminded of just how poor a government this is. That brief moment of confidence sapped by footage of Boris Johnson.

While her options are limited maybe that is a good thing, I don't think this is a government that can handle yet another crisis in the form of proper hostilities with Russia.

Having cranked up the crisis to extraordinary levels - with massive deployments of troops and anti-terrorist police to investigate the incident, and with contradictory and alarming messages given to the people of Salisbury - and having given Russia an ultimatum yesterday - and done so moreover in the most public way possible - Theresa May will struggle to live up to expectations she has herself created.

Already talk of England pulling out of the World Cup in Russia looks to have been abandoned - it would be deeply unpopular with the English public - and wild talk of breaking off diplomatic relations with Russia and launching cyber attacks against Russia are utterly self-defeating and look farfetched. I sense no enthusiasm in Europe for further significant sanctions against Russia, and talk of an appeal to NATO under Article 5 is already being discounted.

Yet if Theresa May fails to live up to the expectations she has herself created she risks being humiliated and looking weak.